Spanish

Spain has a rich and diverse film tradition, with envelope-pushers from Luis Buñuel to Pedro Almodóvar (including genre filmmakers such as Amando de Ossorio) as well as less antic artists like Carlos Saura, Alejandro Amenabar and Augusti Villaronga. Ironically, the severe political repression of the Franco years nonetheless allowed liberal production of umpteen cheesy exploitation flicks and escapist international co-productions, a whisper of which lives on today in the export of Spanish actors like Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz.